July 19, 2024
SINGAPORE – Irish boy band Westlife have released a Mandarin song – with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
On June 25, the quartet dropped the single Love And Courage, the 2016 song originally performed by Chinese singer Jason Zhang.
Westlife – made up of Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan, Mark Feehily and Shane Filan – did not perform the song, although they were involved in the process.
The song was a collaboration between Westlife and China’s Tencent Music Entertainment (TME). It was powered by Kugou AIK, touted as the world’s first multilingual AI singing technology developed by TME’s Kugou Music.
According to the Chinese media, AIK’s AI technology is able to “imitate” someone’s vocal characteristics completely after he or she sings or reads a few lines.
AIK can reportedly support the performance of songs in 10 languages such as English, Japanese and Korean, as well as 15 Chinese dialects such as Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka.
Westlife, formed in 1998, have previously performed a Chinese-language song, The Ordinary Road. This was at their first virtual concert live-streamed through Chinese social media platform WeChat in December 2021.
The popular song, originally performed by Chinese singer Pu Shu and was the theme song for the Chinese movie The Continent (2014), won Best Original Film Song at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards.
Westlife have just completed their Westlife With Love Tour 2024 in China in May and June, performing in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Shenzhen.